[Bogie_smiles]

Ok, so let us assume that you are right. That there isn't any violation of time going on, and it has nothing to do with a static universe. You would agree I assume that it seems as though the future random activity in the experimental setup affects the photon in retrospect, correct? So, how does this work? Why does it seem that way in your view?

I do enjoy your views, and our discussion, but there is a place for hard science, which is generally accepted, and there is a place for unprovable layman ideas about the “as yet” unknowns of science, like mine.

If you approve, I will respond to your questions in a post that I will write in my thread, “If there was one Big Bang event, why not multiple Big Bang events”. When that post is ready, I will come back to this post and edit in the link to the appropriate response, written to you, on my thread out in the “New Theories” sub-forum.

Then I can address your questions in an environment where layman ideas can be discussed freely, without having to worry about young readers getting misled, and where our views as layman science enthusiasts won’t be confused with science done by professionals. That is in accord with the forum guidelines, and relieves the moderators from having to decide if the guidelines have been crossed.

I hope this is not an inconvenience to you. Go to that post using this 'link" now active.

[demalk (OP)]

I hope this is not an inconvenience to you. Go to that post using this ”link”. which I will edit tomorrow to actually contain the link that I haven’t written yet

Not at all, looking forward to it

[jeffreyH]

Quantum time is the proper time in general relativity. Since the laws of physics are the same in all inertial frames of reference we can devise a transform for quantum interactions in remote frames. This is separate from coordinate time but can be derived from it. These transforms then make time relative in quantum mechanics for all particle interactions. It sounds easy but is far from it.

Hahaha it doesn't sound easy at all, trust me  Please elaborate more. What do you mean by 'a transform for quantum interactions in remote frames'?

I will reply to this later as I on lunch break at work at the moment.

[jeffreyH]

OK let's take a step into Heisenberg's world. The energy of an oscillating particle is

If w = and p = mv then we can restate this as

If we then replace p with matrix P and x with matrix Q we have

This is quantised oscillator energy. The classical and quantum versions are both linked by proper time

[jeffreyH]

It may be worth also reading about imaginary time.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imaginary_time

[jeffreyH]

Now above it should be noted that P is the momentum matrix and Q is the position matrix. This can be used to derive the uncertainty relationship.

[demalk (OP)]

Now above it should be noted that P is the momentum matrix and Q is the position matrix. This can be used to derive the uncertainty relationship.

I understand that everything about QM implies time. I am not proposing to just erase time from the equations. That wouldn't make any sense. Of course the equations are right to include time. They are describing what we see and so we need it represented in our formulas if we want to make predictions. All I am saying is that this is what they do: they describe the world we live in. They don't describe the underlying layer, if any, and if it were a static informational layer, there would be no way to prove or disprove that through QM's equations just like a pre-QM argument about QM could never have been proven or disproven using any of Newton's equations.

Now, I understand you firmly disagree with this, so please, explain to me how What is so certainly fundamental about QM that absolutely nothing more fundamental could possibly exist?

[jeffreyH]

The matrices P and Q are both infinite. From these it can be determined that energy comes in set discreet amounts. There is not an energy continuum. That is as fundamental as it gets.

[jeffreyH]

Read here about the fundamental nature of the uncertainty principle. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle
Heisenberg himself misinterpreted this.

[demalk (OP)]

The matrices P and Q are both infinite. From these it can be determined that energy comes in set discreet amounts. There is not an energy continuum. That is as fundamental as it gets.

There is of course a good chance that these equations do indeed say something about their own fundamentalness which I am currently missing due to my lack of understanding and if so, I am keen to find out about them. But any argument to be taken seriously will certainly have to entail a bit more logic than the above. Your statement that discrete amounts = fundamentalness is a fallacy. By that reasoning, the first person to have discovered that all living tissue consists of discrete cells could have said the same thing: look, all life consists of discrete amounts, I must have hit the fundamental level of reality. Whereas the cel of course consists of molecules which consist of atoms, which we now know have their own special inner workings and their elementary bits can be broken up further yet if we apply enough energy like in the LHC. In other words: there is nothing about finding discrete amounts in itself that guarantees fundamentalness. It just means you've hit a deeper layer of reality than before. Nothing more, nothing less.

[demalk (OP)]

Read here about the fundamental nature of the uncertainty principle. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle
Heisenberg himself misinterpreted this.

I am not disputing the math, what I am questioning is its interpretation. The contradiction here is quite obvious: the 'fundamental' uncertainty is attributed to wave-like systems. But every child understands that a wave is caused by something. If nothing acts on the water, it sits still. Any wave has to have a cause. As soon as there is cause, then there is mechanism, and as soon as there is mechanism, fundamental unknowability evaporates. The only thing left to be fundamental here, perhaps, is our inability to include the cause in our formulas. That is already a vastly different proposition than that of Copenhagen.

By stating that the foundations of reality are probabilistic, Copenhagen essentially claims that there is no cause. There is no mechanism. That is directly perpendicular to the concept of a wave-like system which according to the very same model underlies everything. It simply cannot be true that what underlies everything fundamentally, is causeless waves. It is an inherently internally inconsist claim. Furthermore, as long as QM and relativity haven't been married while both seem to be ultimately true, and fundamental mysteries remain such as dark matter and dark energy, then it seems a little premature to make any definitive claims about fundamentalness based on any existing math whatsoever.

[jeffreyH]

Both quantum mechanics and relativity agree with observation. If they didn't then you may have a point. They agree do therefore you don't. Disputing something for the sake of it is not the best way to learn.

[demalk (OP)]

Both quantum mechanics and relativity agree with observation. If they didn't then you may have a point. They agree do therefore you don't.

The fact that they agree is central to my whole point. Which apparently you've missed completely.

Disputing something for the sake of it is not the best way to learn.

Agreed.

[yor_on]

Interesting read Jeffrey, and I agree Evan, from where and what can they stipulate a 'outside'? I don't consider time to be 'relative' in relativity as suggested in that text though. Your clock, the 'wristwatch' you use won't give you a longer (or for that sake 'shorter') lifespan, whatever trick you try, unless you find a way to freeze yourself down to then revive you. Doing that won't allow you to consciously enjoy those days passed in a frozen condition though, and according to everything we know time still pass even when you don't know it.

Time is a local constant, just as 'c' is one.
=

Using my analogy, now try to make time a result of entropy :)
=

The text is based on general assumptions about how and what a universe 'is', sort of like you watching a 'whole universe' through a telescope. Doing so you then define 'islands of time' slower and faster than your wristwatch, but locally measured, aka in a same frame of reference, all clocks 'ticks' alike. It's not relativity that is wrong, it's just our presumptions about what a universe is.

Actually, what is important here is the stipulation that ones 'lifespan', locally measured, never will change, no matter what speed, mass, etc etc you find yourself to be in/at. It's simple, time is a local constant and one proof of it is being in a same frame of reference.

Btw: so is 'c' :)

A local constant I mean, every constant is, or has its base from local observations. 'repeatable experiments' (observations) creates them,  those all being of a local nature. It's just us lifting them up to a global representation

[Bogie_smiles]

Interesting read Jeffrey, and I agree Evan, from where and what can they stipulate a 'outside'?

That is a good point. “Outside” seems best accessed in a thought experiment. "Local" is where your clock runs true; outside, it is open to relative motion affects.

[Bill S]

The fact that they agree is central to my whole point.

Please could you "distil" that for a hitch-hiker with little time to review the thread?

[alancalverd]

Let's look at the original question.

Things happen, and the universe changes. If there is a detectable difference between "before and "after" then the concept of time has meaning, and if there are consistent differences between different systems, its meaning must be universal. If we count sunrises and the grass gets a bit taller as the count increases, there is a common dimension for astronomy and horticulture, which we call time.

At the quantum level I think a lot of confusion is caused by the word "uncertainty", which colloquially implies some involvement of an observer or arbiter. A better translation is "indeterminacy", which doesn't. It's the difference between guessing the position of a raindrop (uncertainty) and knowing you are in fog. Wave mechanics is simply a mathematical model that helps us predict how the universe evolves: it doesn't imply that electrons are waves any more than your income tax code implies that you are a number on paper, but both can be used to predict the probable evolution of something in time.

[jeffreyH]

Alan cuts through the BS once again with the scalpel of truth. Good on you sir. AND you got best answer. Wow! Top form.

[demalk (OP)]

Let's look at the original question.

Things happen, and the universe changes. If there is a detectable difference between "before and "after" then the concept of time has meaning, and if there are consistent differences between different systems, its meaning must be universal. If we count sunrises and the grass gets a bit taller as the count increases, there is a common dimension for astronomy and horticulture, which we call time.

At the quantum level I think a lot of confusion is caused by the word "uncertainty", which colloquially implies some involvement of an observer or arbiter. A better translation is "indeterminacy", which doesn't. It's the difference between guessing the position of a raindrop (uncertainty) and knowing you are in fog. Wave mechanics is simply a mathematical model that helps us predict how the universe evolves: it doesn't imply that electrons are waves any more than your income tax code implies that you are a number on paper, but both can be used to predict the probable evolution of something in time.

Thank you for your well-put and thoughtful contribution. I will try to reciprocate as thoughtfully as I can

I agree with you, of course, that time has meaning. One should even argue it has more than just meaning. The concept of 'time' is implied in that of 'prediction' and prediction is arguably what all of physics and most other sciences are all about: creating models that are as accurate as possible at predicting how the world behaves. So needless to say, 'time' has tremendous meaning.

The question here however is not whether time is meaningful, but whether it is fundamental. There are a lot of things that are very meaningful but nowhere near fundamental. Love. Chair. Internet. Child. Understanding. Drums. Elephant. All extremely meaningful. But the fact that I can pick up the chair, hold it over my head and throw it straight through the window, doesn't make the chair or my head or the window the least bit fundamental. All these things either exist as concepts stored in our neural networks or as macroscopic objects or both, but none of them are fundamental in any way. 'Gold' means nothing to an electron, let alone 'wood' or 'chair'. So these things can never be fundamental.

So what is fundamental? Well, the photon seems pretty fundamental to me. It has no mass, its speed equals the maximum speed of causality, it interacts sub-atomically as well as macroscopically and we need it by definition to observe anything. Seems like a great starting point. If we can figure out how a photon experiences the world, perhaps we can get a step closer to what the world really is like fundamentally.

So what does the universe look like from the perspective of a photon? How is its perspective different from ours? Well, according to special relativity a photon doesn't experience time. If you would travel at the speed of light, everything would seem to happen at once. Of course this seems like a theoretical quirk because a) mass could never travel at that speed, and b) clearly everything doesn't happen all at once. Time actually passes. Right? But why wouldn't we assume that the photon may be right? Clearly it interacts with the world in a much more fundamental way than we do? With the whole being absorbed and emitted by individual electrons at the speed of causality and all, perhaps we should take its 'theoretical' perspective a bit more seriously? Maybe we can find some experimental evidence that this theoretical timelessness of photons might actually be a more accurate representation of the fundamental universe than the timefulness of mass?

Turns out, yes, we can. In the quantum eraser experiment we are affecting the behaviour of photons in hindsight. After the photon has already travelled through the slit(s), and has already been absorbed by one of the atoms in the screen, we are able to modify its past behaviour. We could even set up the experiment so that the choice would be delayed for billions of years after the photons have completed their paths. And still somehow they will have incorporated that distant future event into their behaviour. No matter how hard we try, we cannot fool the system.

How much more proof could we want? Isn't it obvious that the concepts  'time' and 'random' mean nothing to these photons? Isn't that exactly what we'd expect if the idea that a photon experiences no time weren't theoretical at all? If time and future and random are emerging phenomena carrying meaning only to that which has mass, then what is left at the fundamental level, the level that a photon 'sees', is a static, timeless, informational, pre-determined layer. Just like the software of a computer program being executed by a processor. The causal relations are "real", but only from the internal perspective of that which is being executed. At the most basic fundamental layer of it all lies a static, timeless 'hard drive' containing all the predetermined code - informational bits which dictate everything that will ever happen throughout the duration of the program. In other words: a fundamentally deterministic "reality".

[demalk (OP)]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheeler%E2%80%93DeWitt_equation